Christy & Jones

A supplier in the Kansas City gaming trade

Specialist manufacturer research places Christy & Jones at 1709 East 31st Street in Kansas City. The business is associated with William Christy, Bernard “Bud” Jones, and Pat Sullivan. Its exact formation history is less firmly established than the later address and product trail, so the commonly used 1950s starting period is more defensible than an unqualified precise founding date.

The products and paperwork give the business substance beyond a list of names. Sample-box studies connect the firm with the Hat & Cane program and with the Jack Todd Diamond lineage. These objects were part of a supply trade in which customers could order distinctive gaming pieces without operating a factory of their own.

The seller and the factory were different

The Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club's manufacturer study identifies Burt Company as the physical producer of Christy & Jones composition chips. That distinction explains why a chip can properly be associated with Christy & Jones without having been pressed in a Christy & Jones factory.

Four relationships help make the process understandable. Christy & Jones could sell or commission an order and market or select the mold program. Burt could manufacture the pieces. A casino, club, or other buyer would receive the finished order. These are connected activities, but they answer different historical questions.

The surviving order-card trail supports close study of customer names, quantities, colors, and inserts. In a chip description, an insert is a contrasting section incorporated into the edge or body design. Such details can help distinguish orders that look broadly similar. The exact legal arrangements for every mold and production period remain less certain than the specialist evidence of Burt's manufacturing role.

Hat & Cane and the Diamond connection

The Hat & Cane name describes the repeated hat-and-cane impressions associated with a well-known chip mold family. Collectors distinguish a shiny-hat form associated with Christy & Jones from other versions, using the impressions alongside construction and edge details. These are comparison clues rather than a single-feature authentication test.

That caution matters because the transition to later Paul-Son material was not a clean visual break. Specialist and collector research describes Burt production continuing into some Paul-Son orders. A shiny hat therefore does not automatically date an object to Christy & Jones or prove that it predates the company's breakup.

The Jack Todd Diamond connection broadens the story beyond Hat & Cane. The manufacturer study places the acquisition or control of that lineage in the early 1960s, but an exact legal transfer date is not settled by the present record. A negotiation, a purchase, possession of tooling, and the first use of a mold could occur at different times.

The October 1963 move to Las Vegas

The specialist sample-box study dates the company's move to Las Vegas to October 1963 and gives its address as 3123 South Highland Avenue. This is a concrete change in the business's geography. It places Christy & Jones inside the city's gaming-supply history without implying that all production moved with the office.

The company broke apart in 1965 according to the existing manufacturer chronology. Its significance extends beyond that short Las Vegas phase because later Paul-Son and Bud Jones histories carry forward people and product relationships from this world. Continuity in a person, mold, or customer relationship is not necessarily continuity of the same legal business.

What the legal record actually establishes

Stories about the company sometimes center on federal scrutiny and allegations concerning crooked dice. Those accounts need to be distinguished from the narrower facts established by the available court record. A 1968 Fifth Circuit opinion describes a 1965 interstate used-gambling-equipment transaction involving Christy Jones and Company in Las Vegas and discusses authenticated company records.

That opinion is valuable primary evidence of a business transaction. It does not establish that Christy & Jones itself was convicted, and it does not show that every sale by the company involved unlawful equipment. Treating the court case as proof of a broader criminal narrative would lose the distinction between a documented transaction and later interpretation.

A short business life, a lasting object history

Christy & Jones remains important because its objects connect suppliers, factories, and customers across several later collecting categories. Sample boxes show the products being marketed; order records help connect those products to specific customers; mold studies make comparisons possible when paperwork is incomplete.

The best reading of a surviving chip brings those forms of evidence together. The company name gives one part of the story, but production and use require their own support. Understanding that distinction makes Christy & Jones more than a preface to Paulson: it becomes a case study in how American casino equipment actually reached the gaming floor.